Move slider to take apart the iPhone and see its parts.
Credit: Alastair Halliday

Apple's latest offering proves that revolutionary tech products don't have to be that revolutionary. Upon the iPhone's release, enthusiasts around the world rushed to tear it apart, eager to see something new. Instead, they found that Apple had relied mostly on tried-and-true components--with one big exception: a truly stunning multitouch screen that allows users to manipulate data and images in entirely unprecedented ways.

Two Boards
One of the iPhone's two circuit boards includes the CPU, the flash memory, and other system memory chips that allow the phone to run its stripped-down version of Apple's OS X operating system and serve as a media device. The other board hosts the elements that enable communications: chips from ­Infineon that provide connectivity over GSM (global system for mobile) and EDGE (enhanced data rates for GSM evolution) mobile-phone networks, as well as an 802.11b/g chip from ­Marvell. ­Howard ­Curtis, the VP of global services at ­Portelligent, which analyzes electronic products, says this design leaves Apple with options. "You could isolate changes to one board and swap it out," he says--say, to provide support for CDMA, another popular mobile-phone standard.